Sugar shortage

TV reports an upcoming sugar shortage. Prices have gone up 95 percent. Brazil is converting sugarcane into fuel. I guess my hummingbirds will have to do with artificial sweeteners.

So, do you think there will be a run on sugar? I wonder if any of the other countries who produce sugar will do the same as Brazil?

Thanks to the powerful sugar lobby, US prices are already well above world market rates due to trade barriers. I wonder whether US pricing will be affected at all?

-Paul W.

Back a short while ago from one of our local markets there to find sugar cane - real, true, honest Cuban sugar cane - at the most reasonable price of NIS 5 (about US$ 1.30) for a meter long (about 3 feet) piece. Who was I to resist returning with three of those?

Best
Rogov

Also, the diversion of corn to make fuel alcohol has put cost pressure on the common sucrose alternative - high fructose corn syrup.

Given the obesity and diabetes epidemic in the US, upward price pressure on sugar is a good thing.

Less high fructose corn syrup is a good thing.

Wasn't this a story like a year or two ago only to be dispelled as a marketing ploy by the sugar industry....or was that rice? I can't remember but this does seem eerily similar.

There was a rice shortage scare some years back. Some people went as far as panic buying large quantities of rice and burying it in their backyards.

-Paul W.